The invention relates to packages such as bottles used for containing fluids.
Bottles are widely used in consumer goods industry for packaging various type of fluid products. Such bottles are normally decorated, often using labels which are stuck onto the bottle. Such labels are typically used not only for decoration but also to display usage instructions or information on the composition of the content for example. However, conventional labelling technology such as wet glue labels, self-adhesive labels, or in mold labels do not allow to decorate the full bottle surface area. The accumulation of such visual signals led the industry to develop new approaches allowing higher decoration coverage of the container""s surface, one of them being the shrink-sleeving of packages.
Shrink-sleeving is mostly used in the drinking industry, whereby a sleeve of thermo-plastic material may be shrinked all around a beverage bottle, thus offering an extended area which may be used for any type of graphics. Typical thermoplastic materials used for shrink sleeving include polyvinylchloride (PVC), polyestertetraphtalate (PET), oriented polypropylene (OPP) and oriented polystyrene (OPS).
However, use of shrink-sleeving did not extend to relatively larger containers, particularly because of the need of a side handle when such containers are used. Indeed, the sleeving of a bottle consists in inserting the bottle into a straight sleeve of thermo-plastic material, the thermo-plastic being then heated up to shrink and fit tightly around the container. Clearly, in case of a container or bottle having a side handle, such a process would lead to preventing access to the handle as the sleeve would cover the recess produced by the handle, so that the handle cannot be gripped.
The invention seeks to provide a bottle with a side handle, whereby the surface available for displaying graphics onto the bottle is maximised.
In accordance with the invention, this object is accomplished in a bottle having a base, a top part and sides, the bottle comprising a handle located on a side of the bottle, the bottle being shrink-sleeved, whereby the sleeve covers the handle, the sleeve comprising a cut-out allowing to grip the handle, the cut-out having a fringe maintained flush against the bottle.